There’s a serious missing factor in Unreal that many don’t seem to be aware of. Unreal is not capable of bulk importing FBX assets in an orderly manner and correspondingly unpacking and storing them in their own folder structures. You could never import multiple assets at once with a few clicks, let alone larger projects exceeding in GB, without causing a data files mess. The importer only recognizes imported file chains from a single folder, but not the files in the subfolders below. And the way to extract everything by throwing it into one folder, without any structure. Imagine you drop in 10 fbx files. You’ll find all the data in one folder! Good luck separating the stuff!
I put it this way, anyone who is intelligent and can program should write such bulk-mporter that goes by structure and all possibilities, because then hundreds of thousands of unity users would be able to migrate with their large projects. It’s absolutely embarrassing that the best real-time software in the world is too stupid to keep FBX structured, by accepting subfolders & files and putting the data in their proper folders to keep the structure of your project, instead of unpacking all files in the same root folder, so you no longer have control over your own files.
Say what you want, but trying to smooth that out with some dull comment won’t work! I don’t work with Unreal5 to this day, for exactly this reason! May the light still be so well calculated and the rest of the engine super awesome! I can’t get my 400GB of data into the system without 20 slaves and the necessary time of at least 3-6 months.
Never did that myself, but i think you can make simple python script (as editor tool), and import it all with keeping structure you want. And python is great for handling such stuff.
I personally (and manually) imported about 20 animation packages into single project. Then manually retargetted them all, moved (Again manually) to new folders (so all imported projects had same logical structure of folders). It was about 1000 animations. So it is doable. Just one long sunday with unreal importing watching old startrek and Cpt. Morgan.
Edit:
Some time later (i was partially triggered by this topic). And like 10min searching on YT and googles. There are tutorials about “Editor Tools” can be done in blueprints, and as either script, or UMG widget. This problem from OP is easily solvable.
1st suggestions makes sense. As I said already, someone who can programm can do that, and I would be willing to pay a lot for such plugin.
Your 2nd explaination is very nice, but as you said, you moved stuff manually and it was only about animations. I am talking about FBX assets with sub-objects, and tons of PBR textures. Even the material takes too much clicks. The idea to count only on the datasmith/link soltution is pretty one-sided.
Drag and drop several FBX files in the content folder, they should be put in a folder that is the one from their path.
Now you can go back in blueprint and tweak code so that instead of passing only the last folder as Custom sub path you could pass a sub tree.
This looks like a ton of work, does this plugin configure default directories to put UAssets in by asset type? Or does it follow source folder structure? The importing process is sluggish.
Another idea:
Thank you for this one! That would be the one thing, but still you would need to import each fbx separately. The bulk issue is another thing. The fact is: it should not be done by us - the users, to find a solution! It is EPIC’s job to provide us stuff like that. Pity is just that this and any other forum post in unreal simple CAN’T explode, because unreal users tend to digg into half baked solutions by themselve, which in general is a great thing, but not if it comes to such necessities! My opinion! Because if you break it down you will realize it is too much for a regular user, or someone who “can” programm it. I think that takes more than just some blue prints, since you have to know the FBX format itself and other facts.
Breakdown:
complete FBX support (all other formats are bad or too app-specific!) > future: gltf
bulk import in general: drag parent project folder => checks all sub-folders & data
You can write own tool in blueprints, together with calculating LOds, making collision, renaming and sorting.
If you use Josn (C++ required) or data objects you can even create either CSV or json file that keeps names and folders where to move/translate imported assets.
